📅 On This Day in Military History
1 event across history
Near Fort Phil Kearny in present-day Wyoming, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors under the strategic leadership of Red Cloud executed a brilliant decoy ambush. Crazy Horse and a small party lured Captain William Fetterman's detachment of 81 soldiers over Lodge Trail Ridge and into a devastating trap where roughly 1,500 to 2,000 warriors waited. The entire U.S. force was wiped out in less than 30 minutes.
The Fetterman Fight was the worst defeat for the U.S. Army on the Plains up to that point. It shocked Washington and contributed directly to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, in which the United States agreed to abandon the Bozeman Trail forts — a rare strategic victory for Red Cloud and the Lakota.
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